1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a liquid crystal device.
2. Related Art
JP-A-2007-286401 is an example of related art. As described in the example, a method for manufacturing a liquid crystal device in which an inorganic alignment film is fabricated by using a manufacturing apparatus that includes a film forming chamber and sputtering equipment has been known. In the film forming chamber, the alignment film is formed of an alignment film forming material on a substrate by sputtering.
The example adopted a so-called facing target sputtering (FTS) method in which an inorganic alignment film is formed by using the sputtering equipment that has a pair of targets and the targets oppose each other with a plasma forming region therebetween.
The manufacturing apparatus disclosed in the example also has an electron capture means (a magnetic field generator) that traps or reflects electrons contained in the plasma forming region. Moreover an opening through which sputtered particles are emitted from the plasma forming region is disposed in the apparatus at a position where the sputtered particles obliquely fall onto a substrate.
In this way, it is avoided that an inorganic alignment film having an unintended configuration is formed because of plasma, and making it possible to obtain a fine inorganic alignment film.
However, the above-described method for manufacturing the liquid crystal device has an disadvantage that a pretilt angle of liquid crystal molecules becomes too small when an incident angle of the sputtered particle, which is the angle between the sputtered particle and a normal line of the substrate, is made small. This deteriorates a display quality of the liquid crystal device.
When the incident angle of the sputtered particle is made large, the pretilt angle of the liquid crystal molecules can be made large. However, in this case, a film formation rate is decreased. Moreover, a distance between the substrate and the opening of the sputtering equipment becomes large, which makes the whole size of the equipment too big.
Furthermore, when the inorganic alignment film fabricated by the FTS method is made of silicon oxide, many polarized hydroxyl groups exist on the surface of the film and these hydroxyl groups weaken a moisture-proof property of the inorganic alignment film. As a result, resistance of the liquid crystal device to moisture and light is decreased.